Gulls

Their urgent calls scrape like rusty hingesyet also screech like keening or jeeringto us reclining in greased near nakednessyet oddly without desire as black shadowsripple swiftly across our sandy blanketslike shades of spectral crosses once waveredbefore bonfires of books and heretics.

Regard that one-legged yellow-eyed birdwho regards us from that diffident distanceinstinct prescribes. Note how Satan’s blood-red spot marks his yellow beak. He desiresour sandwiches, but if we bobbed half-deadin swells and troughs amidst a lazy swirlof sharks he’d be stripping sun-cooked faces.

We watch them boil behind a far trawler’srooster wake like swarming gnats. Sailing aslantin twos they mew against wind that lofts themand their boomerang wings elbowed askewreminds one of us almost too old to sunburnhow a glassy eye glimmered from halved seagullcrushed in a crinoline hat halfway through